As I just started hacking a bit on the Eclipse stuff, I often encounter
the following problem.
I fetched a plug-in I want to work on from the Eclipse CVS. Now I make
some changes, but want to test the original version again.
One way would be to create a patch, revert all changes, test the
original code, apply the patch again (quite unhandy).
I know, a good solution would be a DVCS, but we are not there yet ;-)
How do you jump between your own version and the original one from the
CVS? Or do checkin the code in your own VCS. But then there is the
problem again to synchronize with the Eclipse CVS.

I just found out that there is a local history. I never noticed that
before (so many features in Eclipse :-)). This seems to be very helpful
for that task.

Kai Schlamp schrieb:
> Hello.
>
> As I just started hacking a bit on the Eclipse stuff, I often encounter
> the following problem.
> I fetched a plug-in I want to work on from the Eclipse CVS. Now I make
> some changes, but want to test the original version again.
> One way would be to create a patch, revert all changes, test the
> original code, apply the patch again (quite unhandy).
> I know, a good solution would be a DVCS, but we are not there yet ;-)
> How do you jump between your own version and the original one from the
> CVS? Or do checkin the code in your own VCS. But then there is the
> problem again to synchronize with the Eclipse CVS.
>
> Best regards,
> Kai

"Kai Schlamp" <schlamp@gmx.de> wrote in message
news:gshn93$dlt$1@build.eclipse.org...
> Hello.
>
> As I just started hacking a bit on the Eclipse stuff, I often encounter
> the following problem.
> I fetched a plug-in I want to work on from the Eclipse CVS. Now I make
> some changes, but want to test the original version again.
> One way would be to create a patch, revert all changes, test the original
> code, apply the patch again (quite unhandy).

As you discovered, local history is one way around this.

But actually, I prefer to do exactly what you described. The reason is that
then I have the patch, so others can review it and I can post it in the bug
report. It only takes a few seconds to revert or re-apply a patch, in most
cases; I don't find it un-handy at all.

Kai Schlamp wrote:
> Hello.
>
> As I just started hacking a bit on the Eclipse stuff, I often encounter
> the following problem.
> I fetched a plug-in I want to work on from the Eclipse CVS. Now I make
> some changes, but want to test the original version again.
> One way would be to create a patch, revert all changes, test the
> original code, apply the patch again (quite unhandy).
> I know, a good solution would be a DVCS, but we are not there yet ;-)
> How do you jump between your own version and the original one from the
> CVS? Or do checkin the code in your own VCS. But then there is the
> problem again to synchronize with the Eclipse CVS.

In addition to Local History and Patches (which I, personally, use most
often), you could try modifying the name of a project that you edit so
it is different than the original. Then you can have the original also
checked out in your workspace and open/close it as needed.

Thanks for the insight in how you manage that task.
Another option (the one I use now) is to have another VCS on top of the
local CVS repository (so one repo managed by two VCSs). I use Mercurial
for that task. Now I can switch between the original version and my
version very fast.
This has also the advantage that I can make bigger changes and can
always roll back to intermediate changes that I committed to Mercurial.
But at the same time can fetch new updates from the Eclipse CVS.